What a $30 Box Teaches Us About Supply Chains

When Daniel tried to buy 40 industrial Euroboxes, he found a $0.50 factory price on Alibaba and a $30 local price — a 6,000% markup. In this episode, we crack open that $30 box to trace every layer of the supply chain: manufacturing, ocean freight, customs, distribution, pallet-breaking, and retail. What looks like price gouging turns out to be the arithmetic of making a 40-cent object available to one person who wants just 40 of them. A fascinating deep dive into why small-quantity purchasing costs so much more than the factory price suggests.